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Speaker 1: Murder and Oregon is a production of I Heart Radio. I met Tim at a video arcade and I thought he was the cutest, most charming guy that hung out there, and so pretty much right away he asked me out. Liz god Love was ten Natividad's girlfriend and mother of their son. They met while they were both in high school and quickly spiraled into an intensely passionate, dysfunctional, and dangerous relationship, one that would end in a violent death. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco and this is Murder in Oregon. In our last episode, we learned that Tim Natividad, also known as Rooster, was thought by many to be a likely suspect in the murder of Michael Frankie. We also learned of his drug addiction, propensity for violence, and the twisted relationship he had with Carrie Rothschild, one in which he acted as a kind of broken guardian, rescuing her from the drug fueled nightmare that was her mother's house and introducing her to a whole new nightmare of drug dealing, dependence, and murder. During that entire time, Natividad was also in a relationship with Liz god Love, who started to see the evil behind his good looks almost immediately. Well, like I said, I thought it was handsome and you know, pretty much our first date, though he showed a lot of jealousy. We double dated that night, and he was super jealous of his own brother. His own brother was talking to me a little bit too much and that piste him off. He started driving crazy in the car and yeeling at his brother. Yeah, this is my date. You have yours back there, and it's really scared me, but not enough to deny his attraction. Photos of Natividad show a strikingly handsome young man with dark hair and dark eyes. Didn't scare me away, because Tim he always came over and called and he was just like all over me, and he was so nice in the beginning. You know, he had the excuses about his stupid brother trying to pick up on his dates all the time, and you know, so put that to bed just sixteen and caught up in a crush. Liz ignored red flags and refused to see the patterns Natividad demonstrated from the beginning as abusive, something that became much more evident during the course of their relationship. Yeah, I was young and dumb, honestly, the jealousy Tim displayed on their first date continued, and he quickly became possessive. Too young and inexperienced, Lizma stook that intensity for love, and when I would try to break up with him, he wouldn't have it. No, he would not have it at all. I tried a few times, and he would stab himself, cut his wrists with razors. He would do all that in front of me, and then, of course he tells me not to tell anyone, but a lot of times my sister was there, he'd go to the bathroom and start cutting his wrists. Or I was at his mom and dad's house, he was in his bedroom cutting his wrists. He came to my work one evening and I noticed him in the lunch room in the middle of the night. It was really crowded it, and I noticed him watching me, and I'm like, oh my god, you get over here, you get downstairs now. So I got flying downstairs after him. We get in his car and he pulls out a big knife and just starts hacking at himself and blood squirting everywhere, saying he's gonna kill me, just like that, stabbing himself. So I get out of the car running and get help. Police come, took him to the state hospital for the night, and then he got out the next day. So that's how I lived with him. That's how it was. It was very scary and aggressive. But Natividad's behavior wasn't just triggered by their relationship. His brother said that when they grew up in California, early on, he was diagnosed schizophrenic. I don't know if that's true. I have no clue, but so the drugs could have been did it. This was a simil her pattern to what Carrie Rothchild experienced with Tim. His drug use led to Lizz's drug use at a very young age, and Liz says it was spurred on by Tim's own mother. His mom had turned us on to cross tops speed early on, like I think we were seventeen. Then they're a little tiny pill that was like meth. It kept you up for hours and hours and hours. Everybody was using him back then. I asked Liz about Tim's upbringing to gleam inside into his life and how he wound up in Oregon. Aside from drug use, violent crime seemed to be part of his family legacy. He did have his mom and dad, uh six brothers and sisters. His dad worked two jobs to support the family. The mother had a boyfriend all the time on the side, which disgusted and angered Tim. He didn't like it. Of Course, his mom got into some serious trouble in California, and Tim didn't like that. They had to move to Sale organ for her protection. She was in the witness protection program. Evidently she had delivered the money for the hit, so she did some prison time for that. That's why they came to Oregon. A few years into their violent and dysfunctional relationship, Liz found herself pregnant. How did he react to that? Oh, he was happy. He was fine with that. I was in shock. Oh my god. Yeah. He wanted to eventually have another child with me. Her shock stemmed from the fact she didn't think it was possible in the first place. He said, there's no way, shape or form he could ever have children. Never. Tim said he was sterile. He was born with his intestines outside of stomach, and he said that had messed up his system for life. That he was to there's no way he could have children. So he was happy when when I got pregnant and clearly Anthony is his because I don't cheat on people, and Anthony looks a lot like his dad was natividad faithful, No way, no, heck no. I learned later that he had a lot of girlfriends. I didn't know that. See I was at home taking care of the baby, being a good girl while he was out selling drugs or whatever he was doing. I had no idea he had all the girlfriends. After their son was born, Tim's behavior continued to downward spiral. Lizz's sister, Becky, was married to Vince Taylor, one of Tim's childhood friends who we spoke to in a previous episode. He was also a fellow member of the Kaiser Mafia, the drug dealing gang based in a nearby suburb of Salem. We lived right next door to each other. He I lived above and they lived below. He wasn't a quiet version. Everything was just going to hell after a while, you know, and then you would start seeing Liz maybe had a bruise on her face or something like that. You know. At the time, Vince was living with Liz's sister, Becky. Tim wouldn't allow Becky to come to my house. We lived in the same complex and he wouldn't allow me up there to visit her. He just kept my family away from me, and it was just odd. If he'd leave and I needed food in the house, I would sneak to the store as fast as I could. Got caught once. I was pulling in and he he pulled in at the same time. He was screaming at me, and and it scared me. So I grabbed Anthony and started running towards my sister's house. And he took a big set of keys, threw it so hard and nailed me hard with the keys. My son in my arms. I's son of a good And yeah, I think we called the police that night. I believe we always called the police, because we went upstairs and locked the door and put furniture under the door knob, and I wouldn't come out. Eventually, things got so bad that Liz, her sister, and Vince made the decision to flee the state with her small son. Here's Vence killed her. I guarantee you you know he's that messing around. He was that far gone in his mind. You know, he thought everybody was a cop or trying to get him or trying to well, what's you know questioning me. I go, what the hell are you doing? You know, I mean, things are weird. Wants to patch you down, see if you got a mic on your or anything like that. He was just he was gone. Tim got extremely dangerous. We felt he was really dangerous, holding knives to my throat, choking me out, and like the police weren't really there's nothing they could do. I filed restraining orders. Tim would get locked up for the day and get out. It would be worse, so I couldn't trust these ringing orders anymore. I called Tim's probation officer, and I called the Women's Christ Center. They all said, if you can leave the state, So Vince and Becky said, let's go. Let's get the heck out of here. We went to Colorado, where we were scared to death to be there looking for work. They're still afraid of Tim. Everyone was supposed to be quiet and not tell Tim where I was. Well, one of my friends said Tim went to my last place of employment and threatened her with the gun out on the front porch and said tell me where she's at, and she did so. Then my phone call was Tim's coming, He's coming to get you. We're so freaking scared. I made giggle today and it's just out of nerves and frustration. It's just nothing was working. I didn't know what to do, and Liz wasn't Antipidad's only target. Tim was threatening to kill me, my family, Vince. I mean, it was getting really really scary and really bad. And he said he had killed a man and watched him die. Just all the drugs and guns and his behavior, it was time for us to go. We had to go. We were scared for our lives, very very scared, scared for her life and trapped by her fear he'd harm her family. Liz returned to Tim n Tipidads behavior remained erratic, but it was after the time period of the Frankie murder that things really hit a breaking point. It was really super paranoid, angry, sad, mad, a lot of crying and shaking and not letting me out of his sight, not letting me have family, over keeping the blinds shut and saying don't let anybody in, do not answer the door, and if I'm here, I'm not here. He wanted to move to Bend and by house. In those two weeks he's telling me all this, he wanted to go to Hawaii, so he had all these big plans right away. Oh my god. He was packing in the guns. He was bringing guns in the house, a lot of them, machine guns, pistols. J Boutwell, a former detective for the Marion County Sheriff's Department, remembers responding to a call during that time. I was on the road and a radio car and I was assigned to make contact on the beer's department outside off Lancaster. But it was ended up being the girlfriend of the Tivodad also known as Rooster Street name. And I met her downstairs and she told me that all four retires were slashed. And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, man alive. You know, that's a pretty good knife to cut through sidewalls of four tires. And there's no blood, so he didn't cut himself or any of that kind of stuff. No evidence around the ground. It's just like they walk up and Steff and inn so it's like a one pope job. And then she tells me the thing through me. She says, I think Nativa dad did did slash retired. So she told me, she said, I think he did that, and she says, because we've been fighting a lot. And then she goes on a little further to tell me he's got a stolen for you find automatic and apartments right now. And so I said, well, there's that a way I can get it. She says no, because it would burn me and it would have you probably killed her. So I backed off on it and hope that maybe I could find something off the street to maybe do a warrant to get in there take it. And as before we know about NTOODA have anything to do with any any suspicions of Frankie. In fact, I think it was even it was just a few days after Frankie was murdered, I found correct. By this point, Tim's abuse was physical, verbal, and extremely effective. I felt worthless. Tim would tell Anthony, your mother's a bitch, your mother is no good, your mother's going to heaven soon, these types of things he would say to my son, his son. And when you have a violent drug addict in front of you, telling you and showing you you believe it, you believe it with every else of anything you have in Things deteriorated to the point where Lizz's sister came to check on her wait until Tim wasn't at home and decided to take Anthony, fearing for his safety. And I opened the door, I saw it was her, and I let her in as she saw the drugs and the guns and the knives and the danger and took Anthony from me as she said, You're not getting him back, no way, And I understood. I understood it, but Tim did not and responded about as well as you might expect. So she had him for two weeks, and I was getting a lot of pressure from Tim too. He needed to have a son who's gonna kill me, take Anthony to California and hide him underground. Nobody would ever find him again. And he said, and if he had to, he would kill my sister Karen and her husband to go get Anthony. You know, I did give in. I could tell that my soul was just like I wanted to be done forever. I couldn't do it anymore, but I got a burst of energy and wanted to protect my family. So I ran and grabbed the gun off the bed and was headed out the door, headed out my front door, which had a bunch of locks on it, and I couldn't get it unlocked. I was terrified. I knew he was gonna kill me and grab that damn gun. The incessant violence, the abuse and threats against her family and her son finally pushed Liz over the edge. And when I heard him come up behind me, I turned. We said, Liz, but I'll tell you I snapped. It was so weird because I didn't care anymore. I was ready. I told God, you know, I'm ready. He's gonna kill me, I'm ready, you know, just please please please let my sister king be the best mom to Anthony. You know, I was saying my prayers and I felt dead. I just felt like so hollow, worthless. It's over, over over, And I couldn't tell you what snapped. How I snapped. I couldn't tell you. I remember picturing how he was going to shoot everybody at my sister's and then take a little guy who's going to be scared to death on a shootout. He said he would kill any cop that follows him to California. It was a hell no, and so I turned and just shot at a bunch. And I can't believe it, to be honest with you, I can't believe it happened. I can't believe I didn't die. I actually shot him, and two weeks after Michael Frankie's murder, Tim Natividad was dead. At Lizze's trial, her attorney submitted multiple records of domestic abuse into evidence, and several of the cops who arrested Tim during those disturbances showed up to testify. Also on the stand was Lizze's neighbor, who heard the sounds of Tim's violent and abusive behavior firsthand. Oh, my neighbor next door to us. I never met her in my life. Listened to it all night and all morning. So she was there, which was a shock to me and no idea. She was on the stand and said I heard him clearly beat her that night and tell her he was going to kill her and kill her family. I heard the gunshots. I heard it all before the trial. Liz spent three months in jail, but compared to the hell she'd been trapped in, it was almost an escape. Ultimately, I was acquitted, Thank god, it just all came together. I talked to myself, I looked at the jury and I said, you know, my attorney is going to help tell the story. This is how I lived, This is my proof, the restraining orders, the police officers, my friends and family, women, Christis Center. I mean, I did everything I could. Thank god, I was acquitted. Oh my god, thank god. I remember that day. I was so free. But I did still cry for a year because Tim had to die. Over all this, I cried for a year. Although I had my son and I wanted to be stable, and I tried to be strong and stable for him. I had to get it out of my system. And I went to my priest and confessed that I shot and killed him to save my life, and he said that God forgives me, so that felt really good. I ran into several of Tim's family members after this, and they hugged me tight and told me that they understood Timmy had some anger issues and drug problems, so they didn't hate me. But after Tim's death, pieces that connected his timeline to Frankie's killing began to fall into place for Liz, starting with a large sum of money he'd supposedly come into soon after Frankie's murder, which meshes with an earlier story from Greg Johnson that Natividad had received a payoff after Frankie's death. He didn't tell me where the money came from, but he did come into money. We later found out that he hit it in the fan of the bathroom the apartment where Tim died. There was a story that Tim's brother got forty dollars out of the bathroom bent of Tim's money. And I didn't know if it was a rumor that incident would have happened while Liz was in prison awaiting trial. I didn't know. And my sister Karen is the one that cleaned my apartment out when I went to jail, and Karen goes, it's so weird. Lisz, the apartment manager, came in and was yelling at me for taking apart of the bathroom bent and I said, I didn't do it. You know, you leave me alone. I'm not taking the apartment apart. I'm getting Lizz's things out of here. I'm like, oh my god. That large sum, along with tim taunts about having killed a man, continued to haunt Liz. We really wanted to figure out who Tim killed. He said he had killed someone. I believe it was at my attorney's office when we realized there were two people that had died, and Michael Frankie was one of them. I remember vaguely seeing it on the news a whole bunch, you know, that the higher up was murdered, and you see the police tape. You know, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it. But then something happened that did catch Liz's attention, the release of the sketch known as the man in the pinstripe suit, and then the composite drawing that came out in the newspaper and on the news. To me and my sister Karen, it looked like Tim. We were shocked and said, oh my god, it looks like Tim. Interestingly enough, as we've touched upon earlier, that sketch barely made it into the paper. Well, I was calling around trying to get the picture that I heard the state police were circulating among corrections employees trying to figure out who this man in the pinstripe suit was. You know, why wouldn't they release it to the press of it was of interest to the state police? Wouldn't release it? I called Dale pen and he refused to. He said now, I said why, and he said, because it's not any good. This is not very good. Did he elaborate on what he meant? By not good, no, no, not to me. I personally didn't care whether it was good or bad. I wanted to get it, so I kept calling and finally got a copy from bink Too. When you first saw that sketch, what were your thoughts? I said, Wow, what a great drawing. It was really good, and in fact it had been done by Joyce Boylan, who was one of the top three police artists in the country. It was an excellent sketch. Kevin was back in Florida trying to pursue his brother's case with long distance phone calls, which in those days meant racking up thousands of dollars and phone bills. He'd been told by Governor gold Schmidt to direct his questions to Dale Penn, the district attorney assigned to Michael's case, but Pen and Kevin didn't exactly get along. He was a sniveling mealy mouth, wouldn't answer a question directly when I say, mealy Mouth. And the first meeting that we had was with my brother and Binta and the governor at the Governor's reception office outside of his official office, and I was requesting a copy of the autopsy report and address that requested Goldschmidt, and he said he's the man to ask. Point to Dale Pen and Dale Peg goes on this mealy mouth and I said, is that a no? And then he couldn't even say no no. Kevin felt he was fighting an uphill battle with Penn from the beginning, especially over getting Mike's autopsy. He finally agreed to give me a copy of the autopsy report, and he sent it to me in Florida, and it was four pages that was probably blacked out, redacted, and it basically said Mike Frankie described him and that he died stab wound, everything else blacked out. It wasn't just a middle finger, it was a smirking, well at kicking in the ribs. Here you go, Sucker. I guess you know his thinking is I'm thirty two miles away. What am I going to do? But Kevin and his older brother Pat refused to settle for the redacted report. They wouldn't settle for anything less than the com beat autopsy, even if they had to fight for it. Here's Phil. So they hired a lawyer in Salem, Steve Krassik, who has been with him all this time, to sue State officials to get an unredacted copy of the autopsy, which under law, they were entitled to back to Kevin. We did finally get a full copy of the autopsi report, but it was through having to suthe the State of Oregon and all the individuals involved, including Dale Penn and the Governor Goldschmidt, and we had subpoenaed them to bring them into court to justify withholding the autopsy report when within the Oregon state law it's called the Brady Bill, that the members of family are entitled to a full copy of the autopsy report and any other medical information. To have the district Attorney and the head of the eight both denying what's written into the law of the State of Oregon, into the Constitution, and to have them flaunt that, just the arrogance of those fucking bastards is what grips me to this day. How could they how dare they just flaunting their authority? Kevin recalls the day they finally received the report. We were Steve Krassic's office at three forty one State Street, downtown sale Morgan, just a few blocks from the courthouse, and Steve had picked him up. I guess from Dale Penn's office and brought it back to the office where Pat and I were waiting, had flown in for the occasion. Here's Pat's take on getting the unredacted version. A year almost to the day, I was up here and I got the full copy of the ontop. I took that to New York and set with Dr Michael Boden, who became famous years later with the O. J. Simpson case, and he read the thing. He got his calculator out, and he told me that Mike probably didn't love more than about six minutes. That he was fully conscious for about two minutes, and I was losing consciousness after two minutes. And because of the severity of the land, the nature of the wound, that he would not have survived even if he had been in a hospital, that it was through and through, and it just destroyed the whole part of his heart. During the time the family was fighting for the autopsy, they were also getting numerous twisted and anonymous tips claiming that Mike had been mutilated or murdered by ritualistic torture. It was months before they finally confirmed that there had been no ritual type. It was purely defensive wounds. And attack wounds and the weather signs of mutilation. But it took a flat ship six months to get that. So you're living with these movies in your mind. Atrocious, The feed a fire that you don't want lit in the first place. So that was the first thing that I wanted out of the whole thing, was to verify that Dale Penn's tell me the truth when he says there's no mutilation, because Dale Penn had a tendency to lie. And then to be able to identify the nature, number and location of the wounds and how the entry wounds were made, but sort of an angle, and then part of the autops are reported. There isn't mentioned of what you see when you see the autopsic photos, and there's obviously a picture that shows that Mike was in a fight. He got a pretty good whack in the head. The photos were the worst because I knew Mike's brains sitting there running it a million miles an hour as he's bleeding out, and known he's thinking of his family and that's it. Sharing the unredacted autopsy and photos of Mike with their parents was heartbreaking for the brothers. I've never seen two people and more pain in my life, hurt. I'm worried about my kids. That scares me. If I ever had to go through that, I'd probably put a bullet in my head. And then adding the insult that they were only shared with Mike's family under duress and with a threat. When they were given this unredacted copy, they were warned not to let it leak. If it leaked, they would be prosecuted. That was the atmosphere at the time. That's incredible. So Pat takes the autopsy back to Kansas City and shows it to the old Man and they look at it. They have questions since Dale Pennett assured them that they'd run it by the FBI. The old Man called someone he knew, Clarence Kelly, former director of the FBI, who had also been chief of police in Kansas City, and asked him about it. And Kelly came back and said, no, they never talked to us. And that's when the old man's world sort of fell apart. He said, they've been lying to us. They've been lying to us. It was as if they had not only killed his son, but they had sort of killed his faith and how things work, how the world works, and he was crushed. So Dale Penn told Michael Frankie's father that he had run the autopsy passed the FBI and that never happened. That's what he found out. Yeah, he apologized to me. He said, Dale Pen has been lying into me. He's been lying to us, and it crushed my dad. That that was a professional is the greatest generation, thirty years in the army, Colonel full of bird, Colonel as a man that put his trust in God and country and could not believe. And I think he felt that I was being disrespectful when I was questioning the authority. He was sad that I was right. Let's go back to revisit the resistance to releasing the sketch of the man in the pinstripe suit, which now in light of the autopsy and FBI issue, seems more noteworthy. Why do you think you were met with resistance? That's another big puzzle here. But it's such a strange place for them to lie. I mean, sometimes you have to figure out what's going on by the lies they tell, and that that was definitely a lie on Pen's part. It's almost as if they were afraid that someone would see that sketch. And recognize the person. Yeah, that's about the only thing you can conclude. Kevin agrees. When I bitched at him about not releasing the picture, I said, why won't you release it? He says, well, it looks it just looks like a lot of people. No, and that's the problem. And that was the problem when it came out. I looked at it and no, it doesn't look like a lot of people. That it certainly eliminates a lot of people. And the picture they ran and Phil's column was horrible. It was like a one inch by two inch facts from thirty years ago, which you know, was like doing little pencil dots and the thing. So everybody that saw the column says, that looks like ship. But they were forced then to put at the real one. And once people you've seen the real one and it looks like a photograph. And that's when Liz and her sister saw the drawing of the man in the pinstripe suit. I thought it looked like tim native Dad. It did to me and my sister immediately. Immediately. The woman who had lived with Natividad believes he was the man in the pinstripe suit, and he dresses really nice. Sometimes he loved to dress really nice. It was coming together for me. It just started coming together. Okay, Tim's claiming to have a lot of money. You know, he became so paranoid and violent and you know, worse than ever before. Um started connecting dots for myself. So Liz went to the police. It's hard to remember exactly, but I do recall frustration because I said, you, guys, I think Tim killed Michael Frankin. Needs to look into it. Tim always carried a knife. Tim had a huge knife collection. Tim was violent. Tim told me he killed somebody, and I think it's Michael. Look at this composite drawing. And how did the police react to this bombshell? They laughed and said, you can't convict a dead man. There's nothing we can do here. That seems a pretty odd response from the police, particularly since it could have led to the truth. Here's Pat's take. No longer the light was on it, the more chance so as its whole thing, we're gonna blow up in her face. So let's put it away, quiet down, make you go away, And the easiest way to end the investigation into Michael Frankie's murder and make the whole thing, go away, find someone to pen the murder on a patsy. On the next murder in Oregon, an unlikely suspect is arrested. There's so many other folks that are probably yet it just didn't make sense and charged with the murder of Michael Frankie. Mike Kieran's, a convict from the Idaho State Penitentiary, claims Frank Gable told him he killed Frankie during a car burglary, blindsiding everyone, including Frank Gable. I walked into a complicated drug ring and really don't know how complicated it was until now. Murder and Oregon is hosted by Lauren Bright Pacheco and Phil Stanford. Executive producers are Noel Brown, Lauren Bright Pacheco, and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer and lead editor is Taylor Chikogne. Sound designed by Tristan McNeil, Story editing by Matt Riddle, Written by Phil Stanford, Matt Riddle, and Lauren Bright Pacheco. Music written and performed by The Diamond Street Players and mixed by Taylor Chikoyne with music supervision by Noel Brown. Additional music by Tristan kneel Archival elements courtesy of KGW in Portland, Oregon, at the station behind the podcast Urged to Kill. Murdering Oregon is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: Murder and Oregon is a production of I Heart Radio. I met Tim at a video arcade and I thought he was the cutest, most charming guy that hung out there, and so pretty much right away he asked me out. Liz god Love was ten Natividad's girlfriend and mother of their son. They met while they were both in high school and quickly spiraled into an intensely passionate, dysfunctional, and dangerous relationship, one that would end in a violent death. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco and this is Murder in Oregon. In our last episode, we learned that Tim Natividad, also known as Rooster, was thought by many to be a likely suspect in the murder of Michael Frankie. We also learned of his drug addiction, propensity for violence, and the twisted relationship he had with Carrie Rothschild, one in which he acted as a kind of broken guardian, rescuing her from the drug fueled nightmare that was her mother's house and introducing her to a whole new nightmare of drug dealing, dependence, and murder. During that entire time, Natividad was also in a relationship with Liz god Love, who started to see the evil behind his good looks almost immediately. Well, like I said, I thought it was handsome and you know, pretty much our first date, though he showed a lot of jealousy. We double dated that night, and he was super jealous of his own brother. His own brother was talking to me a little bit too much and that piste him off. He started driving crazy in the car and yeeling at his brother. Yeah, this is my date. You have yours back there, and it's really scared me, but not enough to deny his attraction. Photos of Natividad show a strikingly handsome young man with dark hair and dark eyes. Didn't scare me away, because Tim he always came over and called and he was just like all over me, and he was so nice in the beginning. You know, he had the excuses about his stupid brother trying to pick up on his dates all the time, and you know, so put that to bed just sixteen and caught up in a crush. Liz ignored red flags and refused to see the patterns Natividad demonstrated from the beginning as abusive, something that became much more evident during the course of their relationship. Yeah, I was young and dumb, honestly, the jealousy Tim displayed on their first date continued, and he quickly became possessive. Too young and inexperienced, Lizma stook that intensity for love, and when I would try to break up with him, he wouldn't have it. No, he would not have it at all. I tried a few times, and he would stab himself, cut his wrists with razors. He would do all that in front of me, and then, of course he tells me not to tell anyone, but a lot of times my sister was there, he'd go to the bathroom and start cutting his wrists. Or I was at his mom and dad's house, he was in his bedroom cutting his wrists. He came to my work one evening and I noticed him in the lunch room in the middle of the night. It was really crowded it, and I noticed him watching me, and I'm like, oh my god, you get over here, you get downstairs now. So I got flying downstairs after him. We get in his car and he pulls out a big knife and just starts hacking at himself and blood squirting everywhere, saying he's gonna kill me, just like that, stabbing himself. So I get out of the car running and get help. Police come, took him to the state hospital for the night, and then he got out the next day. So that's how I lived with him. That's how it was. It was very scary and aggressive. But Natividad's behavior wasn't just triggered by their relationship. His brother said that when they grew up in California, early on, he was diagnosed schizophrenic. I don't know if that's true. I have no clue, but so the drugs could have been did it. This was a simil her pattern to what Carrie Rothchild experienced with Tim. His drug use led to Lizz's drug use at a very young age, and Liz says it was spurred on by Tim's own mother. His mom had turned us on to cross tops speed early on, like I think we were seventeen. Then they're a little tiny pill that was like meth. It kept you up for hours and hours and hours. Everybody was using him back then. I asked Liz about Tim's upbringing to gleam inside into his life and how he wound up in Oregon. Aside from drug use, violent crime seemed to be part of his family legacy. He did have his mom and dad, uh six brothers and sisters. His dad worked two jobs to support the family. The mother had a boyfriend all the time on the side, which disgusted and angered Tim. He didn't like it. Of Course, his mom got into some serious trouble in California, and Tim didn't like that. They had to move to Sale organ for her protection. She was in the witness protection program. Evidently she had delivered the money for the hit, so she did some prison time for that. That's why they came to Oregon. A few years into their violent and dysfunctional relationship, Liz found herself pregnant. How did he react to that? Oh, he was happy. He was fine with that. I was in shock. Oh my god. Yeah. He wanted to eventually have another child with me. Her shock stemmed from the fact she didn't think it was possible in the first place. He said, there's no way, shape or form he could ever have children. Never. Tim said he was sterile. He was born with his intestines outside of stomach, and he said that had messed up his system for life. That he was to there's no way he could have children. So he was happy when when I got pregnant and clearly Anthony is his because I don't cheat on people, and Anthony looks a lot like his dad was natividad faithful, No way, no, heck no. I learned later that he had a lot of girlfriends. I didn't know that. See I was at home taking care of the baby, being a good girl while he was out selling drugs or whatever he was doing. I had no idea he had all the girlfriends. After their son was born, Tim's behavior continued to downward spiral. Lizz's sister, Becky, was married to Vince Taylor, one of Tim's childhood friends who we spoke to in a previous episode. He was also a fellow member of the Kaiser Mafia, the drug dealing gang based in a nearby suburb of Salem. We lived right next door to each other. He I lived above and they lived below. He wasn't a quiet version. Everything was just going to hell after a while, you know, and then you would start seeing Liz maybe had a bruise on her face or something like that. You know. At the time, Vince was living with Liz's sister, Becky. Tim wouldn't allow Becky to come to my house. We lived in the same complex and he wouldn't allow me up there to visit her. He just kept my family away from me, and it was just odd. If he'd leave and I needed food in the house, I would sneak to the store as fast as I could. Got caught once. I was pulling in and he he pulled in at the same time. He was screaming at me, and and it scared me. So I grabbed Anthony and started running towards my sister's house. And he took a big set of keys, threw it so hard and nailed me hard with the keys. My son in my arms. I's son of a good And yeah, I think we called the police that night. I believe we always called the police, because we went upstairs and locked the door and put furniture under the door knob, and I wouldn't come out. Eventually, things got so bad that Liz, her sister, and Vince made the decision to flee the state with her small son. Here's Vence killed her. I guarantee you you know he's that messing around. He was that far gone in his mind. You know, he thought everybody was a cop or trying to get him or trying to well, what's you know questioning me. I go, what the hell are you doing? You know, I mean, things are weird. Wants to patch you down, see if you got a mic on your or anything like that. He was just he was gone. Tim got extremely dangerous. We felt he was really dangerous, holding knives to my throat, choking me out, and like the police weren't really there's nothing they could do. I filed restraining orders. Tim would get locked up for the day and get out. It would be worse, so I couldn't trust these ringing orders anymore. I called Tim's probation officer, and I called the Women's Christ Center. They all said, if you can leave the state, So Vince and Becky said, let's go. Let's get the heck out of here. We went to Colorado, where we were scared to death to be there looking for work. They're still afraid of Tim. Everyone was supposed to be quiet and not tell Tim where I was. Well, one of my friends said Tim went to my last place of employment and threatened her with the gun out on the front porch and said tell me where she's at, and she did so. Then my phone call was Tim's coming, He's coming to get you. We're so freaking scared. I made giggle today and it's just out of nerves and frustration. It's just nothing was working. I didn't know what to do, and Liz wasn't Antipidad's only target. Tim was threatening to kill me, my family, Vince. I mean, it was getting really really scary and really bad. And he said he had killed a man and watched him die. Just all the drugs and guns and his behavior, it was time for us to go. We had to go. We were scared for our lives, very very scared, scared for her life and trapped by her fear he'd harm her family. Liz returned to Tim n Tipidads behavior remained erratic, but it was after the time period of the Frankie murder that things really hit a breaking point. It was really super paranoid, angry, sad, mad, a lot of crying and shaking and not letting me out of his sight, not letting me have family, over keeping the blinds shut and saying don't let anybody in, do not answer the door, and if I'm here, I'm not here. He wanted to move to Bend and by house. In those two weeks he's telling me all this, he wanted to go to Hawaii, so he had all these big plans right away. Oh my god. He was packing in the guns. He was bringing guns in the house, a lot of them, machine guns, pistols. J Boutwell, a former detective for the Marion County Sheriff's Department, remembers responding to a call during that time. I was on the road and a radio car and I was assigned to make contact on the beer's department outside off Lancaster. But it was ended up being the girlfriend of the Tivodad also known as Rooster Street name. And I met her downstairs and she told me that all four retires were slashed. And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, man alive. You know, that's a pretty good knife to cut through sidewalls of four tires. And there's no blood, so he didn't cut himself or any of that kind of stuff. No evidence around the ground. It's just like they walk up and Steff and inn so it's like a one pope job. And then she tells me the thing through me. She says, I think Nativa dad did did slash retired. So she told me, she said, I think he did that, and she says, because we've been fighting a lot. And then she goes on a little further to tell me he's got a stolen for you find automatic and apartments right now. And so I said, well, there's that a way I can get it. She says no, because it would burn me and it would have you probably killed her. So I backed off on it and hope that maybe I could find something off the street to maybe do a warrant to get in there take it. And as before we know about NTOODA have anything to do with any any suspicions of Frankie. In fact, I think it was even it was just a few days after Frankie was murdered, I found correct. By this point, Tim's abuse was physical, verbal, and extremely effective. I felt worthless. Tim would tell Anthony, your mother's a bitch, your mother is no good, your mother's going to heaven soon, these types of things he would say to my son, his son. And when you have a violent drug addict in front of you, telling you and showing you you believe it, you believe it with every else of anything you have in Things deteriorated to the point where Lizz's sister came to check on her wait until Tim wasn't at home and decided to take Anthony, fearing for his safety. And I opened the door, I saw it was her, and I let her in as she saw the drugs and the guns and the knives and the danger and took Anthony from me as she said, You're not getting him back, no way, And I understood. I understood it, but Tim did not and responded about as well as you might expect. So she had him for two weeks, and I was getting a lot of pressure from Tim too. He needed to have a son who's gonna kill me, take Anthony to California and hide him underground. Nobody would ever find him again. And he said, and if he had to, he would kill my sister Karen and her husband to go get Anthony. You know, I did give in. I could tell that my soul was just like I wanted to be done forever. I couldn't do it anymore, but I got a burst of energy and wanted to protect my family. So I ran and grabbed the gun off the bed and was headed out the door, headed out my front door, which had a bunch of locks on it, and I couldn't get it unlocked. I was terrified. I knew he was gonna kill me and grab that damn gun. The incessant violence, the abuse and threats against her family and her son finally pushed Liz over the edge. And when I heard him come up behind me, I turned. We said, Liz, but I'll tell you I snapped. It was so weird because I didn't care anymore. I was ready. I told God, you know, I'm ready. He's gonna kill me, I'm ready, you know, just please please please let my sister king be the best mom to Anthony. You know, I was saying my prayers and I felt dead. I just felt like so hollow, worthless. It's over, over over, And I couldn't tell you what snapped. How I snapped. I couldn't tell you. I remember picturing how he was going to shoot everybody at my sister's and then take a little guy who's going to be scared to death on a shootout. He said he would kill any cop that follows him to California. It was a hell no, and so I turned and just shot at a bunch. And I can't believe it, to be honest with you, I can't believe it happened. I can't believe I didn't die. I actually shot him, and two weeks after Michael Frankie's murder, Tim Natividad was dead. At Lizze's trial, her attorney submitted multiple records of domestic abuse into evidence, and several of the cops who arrested Tim during those disturbances showed up to testify. Also on the stand was Lizze's neighbor, who heard the sounds of Tim's violent and abusive behavior firsthand. Oh, my neighbor next door to us. I never met her in my life. Listened to it all night and all morning. So she was there, which was a shock to me and no idea. She was on the stand and said I heard him clearly beat her that night and tell her he was going to kill her and kill her family. I heard the gunshots. I heard it all before the trial. Liz spent three months in jail, but compared to the hell she'd been trapped in, it was almost an escape. Ultimately, I was acquitted, Thank god, it just all came together. I talked to myself, I looked at the jury and I said, you know, my attorney is going to help tell the story. This is how I lived, This is my proof, the restraining orders, the police officers, my friends and family, women, Christis Center. I mean, I did everything I could. Thank god, I was acquitted. Oh my god, thank god. I remember that day. I was so free. But I did still cry for a year because Tim had to die. Over all this, I cried for a year. Although I had my son and I wanted to be stable, and I tried to be strong and stable for him. I had to get it out of my system. And I went to my priest and confessed that I shot and killed him to save my life, and he said that God forgives me, so that felt really good. I ran into several of Tim's family members after this, and they hugged me tight and told me that they understood Timmy had some anger issues and drug problems, so they didn't hate me. But after Tim's death, pieces that connected his timeline to Frankie's killing began to fall into place for Liz, starting with a large sum of money he'd supposedly come into soon after Frankie's murder, which meshes with an earlier story from Greg Johnson that Natividad had received a payoff after Frankie's death. He didn't tell me where the money came from, but he did come into money. We later found out that he hit it in the fan of the bathroom the apartment where Tim died. There was a story that Tim's brother got forty dollars out of the bathroom bent of Tim's money. And I didn't know if it was a rumor that incident would have happened while Liz was in prison awaiting trial. I didn't know. And my sister Karen is the one that cleaned my apartment out when I went to jail, and Karen goes, it's so weird. Lisz, the apartment manager, came in and was yelling at me for taking apart of the bathroom bent and I said, I didn't do it. You know, you leave me alone. I'm not taking the apartment apart. I'm getting Lizz's things out of here. I'm like, oh my god. That large sum, along with tim taunts about having killed a man, continued to haunt Liz. We really wanted to figure out who Tim killed. He said he had killed someone. I believe it was at my attorney's office when we realized there were two people that had died, and Michael Frankie was one of them. I remember vaguely seeing it on the news a whole bunch, you know, that the higher up was murdered, and you see the police tape. You know, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it. But then something happened that did catch Liz's attention, the release of the sketch known as the man in the pinstripe suit, and then the composite drawing that came out in the newspaper and on the news. To me and my sister Karen, it looked like Tim. We were shocked and said, oh my god, it looks like Tim. Interestingly enough, as we've touched upon earlier, that sketch barely made it into the paper. Well, I was calling around trying to get the picture that I heard the state police were circulating among corrections employees trying to figure out who this man in the pinstripe suit was. You know, why wouldn't they release it to the press of it was of interest to the state police? Wouldn't release it? I called Dale pen and he refused to. He said now, I said why, and he said, because it's not any good. This is not very good. Did he elaborate on what he meant? By not good, no, no, not to me. I personally didn't care whether it was good or bad. I wanted to get it, so I kept calling and finally got a copy from bink Too. When you first saw that sketch, what were your thoughts? I said, Wow, what a great drawing. It was really good, and in fact it had been done by Joyce Boylan, who was one of the top three police artists in the country. It was an excellent sketch. Kevin was back in Florida trying to pursue his brother's case with long distance phone calls, which in those days meant racking up thousands of dollars and phone bills. He'd been told by Governor gold Schmidt to direct his questions to Dale Penn, the district attorney assigned to Michael's case, but Pen and Kevin didn't exactly get along. He was a sniveling mealy mouth, wouldn't answer a question directly when I say, mealy Mouth. And the first meeting that we had was with my brother and Binta and the governor at the Governor's reception office outside of his official office, and I was requesting a copy of the autopsy report and address that requested Goldschmidt, and he said he's the man to ask. Point to Dale Pen and Dale Peg goes on this mealy mouth and I said, is that a no? And then he couldn't even say no no. Kevin felt he was fighting an uphill battle with Penn from the beginning, especially over getting Mike's autopsy. He finally agreed to give me a copy of the autopsy report, and he sent it to me in Florida, and it was four pages that was probably blacked out, redacted, and it basically said Mike Frankie described him and that he died stab wound, everything else blacked out. It wasn't just a middle finger, it was a smirking, well at kicking in the ribs. Here you go, Sucker. I guess you know his thinking is I'm thirty two miles away. What am I going to do? But Kevin and his older brother Pat refused to settle for the redacted report. They wouldn't settle for anything less than the com beat autopsy, even if they had to fight for it. Here's Phil. So they hired a lawyer in Salem, Steve Krassik, who has been with him all this time, to sue State officials to get an unredacted copy of the autopsy, which under law, they were entitled to back to Kevin. We did finally get a full copy of the autopsi report, but it was through having to suthe the State of Oregon and all the individuals involved, including Dale Penn and the Governor Goldschmidt, and we had subpoenaed them to bring them into court to justify withholding the autopsy report when within the Oregon state law it's called the Brady Bill, that the members of family are entitled to a full copy of the autopsy report and any other medical information. To have the district Attorney and the head of the eight both denying what's written into the law of the State of Oregon, into the Constitution, and to have them flaunt that, just the arrogance of those fucking bastards is what grips me to this day. How could they how dare they just flaunting their authority? Kevin recalls the day they finally received the report. We were Steve Krassic's office at three forty one State Street, downtown sale Morgan, just a few blocks from the courthouse, and Steve had picked him up. I guess from Dale Penn's office and brought it back to the office where Pat and I were waiting, had flown in for the occasion. Here's Pat's take on getting the unredacted version. A year almost to the day, I was up here and I got the full copy of the ontop. I took that to New York and set with Dr Michael Boden, who became famous years later with the O. J. Simpson case, and he read the thing. He got his calculator out, and he told me that Mike probably didn't love more than about six minutes. That he was fully conscious for about two minutes, and I was losing consciousness after two minutes. And because of the severity of the land, the nature of the wound, that he would not have survived even if he had been in a hospital, that it was through and through, and it just destroyed the whole part of his heart. During the time the family was fighting for the autopsy, they were also getting numerous twisted and anonymous tips claiming that Mike had been mutilated or murdered by ritualistic torture. It was months before they finally confirmed that there had been no ritual type. It was purely defensive wounds. And attack wounds and the weather signs of mutilation. But it took a flat ship six months to get that. So you're living with these movies in your mind. Atrocious, The feed a fire that you don't want lit in the first place. So that was the first thing that I wanted out of the whole thing, was to verify that Dale Penn's tell me the truth when he says there's no mutilation, because Dale Penn had a tendency to lie. And then to be able to identify the nature, number and location of the wounds and how the entry wounds were made, but sort of an angle, and then part of the autops are reported. There isn't mentioned of what you see when you see the autopsic photos, and there's obviously a picture that shows that Mike was in a fight. He got a pretty good whack in the head. The photos were the worst because I knew Mike's brains sitting there running it a million miles an hour as he's bleeding out, and known he's thinking of his family and that's it. Sharing the unredacted autopsy and photos of Mike with their parents was heartbreaking for the brothers. I've never seen two people and more pain in my life, hurt. I'm worried about my kids. That scares me. If I ever had to go through that, I'd probably put a bullet in my head. And then adding the insult that they were only shared with Mike's family under duress and with a threat. When they were given this unredacted copy, they were warned not to let it leak. If it leaked, they would be prosecuted. That was the atmosphere at the time. That's incredible. So Pat takes the autopsy back to Kansas City and shows it to the old Man and they look at it. They have questions since Dale Pennett assured them that they'd run it by the FBI. The old Man called someone he knew, Clarence Kelly, former director of the FBI, who had also been chief of police in Kansas City, and asked him about it. And Kelly came back and said, no, they never talked to us. And that's when the old man's world sort of fell apart. He said, they've been lying to us. They've been lying to us. It was as if they had not only killed his son, but they had sort of killed his faith and how things work, how the world works, and he was crushed. So Dale Penn told Michael Frankie's father that he had run the autopsy passed the FBI and that never happened. That's what he found out. Yeah, he apologized to me. He said, Dale Pen has been lying into me. He's been lying to us, and it crushed my dad. That that was a professional is the greatest generation, thirty years in the army, Colonel full of bird, Colonel as a man that put his trust in God and country and could not believe. And I think he felt that I was being disrespectful when I was questioning the authority. He was sad that I was right. Let's go back to revisit the resistance to releasing the sketch of the man in the pinstripe suit, which now in light of the autopsy and FBI issue, seems more noteworthy. Why do you think you were met with resistance? That's another big puzzle here. But it's such a strange place for them to lie. I mean, sometimes you have to figure out what's going on by the lies they tell, and that that was definitely a lie on Pen's part. It's almost as if they were afraid that someone would see that sketch. And recognize the person. Yeah, that's about the only thing you can conclude. Kevin agrees. When I bitched at him about not releasing the picture, I said, why won't you release it? He says, well, it looks it just looks like a lot of people. No, and that's the problem. And that was the problem when it came out. I looked at it and no, it doesn't look like a lot of people. That it certainly eliminates a lot of people. And the picture they ran and Phil's column was horrible. It was like a one inch by two inch facts from thirty years ago, which you know, was like doing little pencil dots and the thing. So everybody that saw the column says, that looks like ship. But they were forced then to put at the real one. And once people you've seen the real one and it looks like a photograph. And that's when Liz and her sister saw the drawing of the man in the pinstripe suit. I thought it looked like tim native Dad. It did to me and my sister immediately. Immediately. The woman who had lived with Natividad believes he was the man in the pinstripe suit, and he dresses really nice. Sometimes he loved to dress really nice. It was coming together for me. It just started coming together. Okay, Tim's claiming to have a lot of money. You know, he became so paranoid and violent and you know, worse than ever before. Um started connecting dots for myself. So Liz went to the police. It's hard to remember exactly, but I do recall frustration because I said, you, guys, I think Tim killed Michael Frankin. Needs to look into it. Tim always carried a knife. Tim had a huge knife collection. Tim was violent. Tim told me he killed somebody, and I think it's Michael. Look at this composite drawing. And how did the police react to this bombshell? They laughed and said, you can't convict a dead man. There's nothing we can do here. That seems a pretty odd response from the police, particularly since it could have led to the truth. Here's Pat's take. No longer the light was on it, the more chance so as its whole thing, we're gonna blow up in her face. So let's put it away, quiet down, make you go away, And the easiest way to end the investigation into Michael Frankie's murder and make the whole thing, go away, find someone to pen the murder on a patsy. On the next murder in Oregon, an unlikely suspect is arrested. There's so many other folks that are probably yet it just didn't make sense and charged with the murder of Michael Frankie. Mike Kieran's, a convict from the Idaho State Penitentiary, claims Frank Gable told him he killed Frankie during a car burglary, blindsiding everyone, including Frank Gable. I walked into a complicated drug ring and really don't know how complicated it was until now. Murder and Oregon is hosted by Lauren Bright Pacheco and Phil Stanford. Executive producers are Noel Brown, Lauren Bright Pacheco, and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer and lead editor is Taylor Chikogne. Sound designed by Tristan McNeil, Story editing by Matt Riddle, Written by Phil Stanford, Matt Riddle, and Lauren Bright Pacheco. Music written and performed by The Diamond Street Players and mixed by Taylor Chikoyne with music supervision by Noel Brown. Additional music by Tristan kneel Archival elements courtesy of KGW in Portland, Oregon, at the station behind the podcast Urged to Kill. Murdering Oregon is a production of I Heart Radio
